Born a Crime

Officer Friendly in his collared shirt
and pressed pants. In Soweto the
police were an occupying army.
They didn’t wear collared shirts.
They wore riot gear. They were
militarized. They operated in teams
known as flying squads, because
they would swoop in out of
nowhere, riding in armored
personnel carriers—hippos, we
called them—tanks with enormous
tires and slotted holes in the side of
the vehicle to fire their guns out of.
You didn’t mess with a hippo. You
saw one, you ran. That was a fact of
life. The township was in a constant
state of insurrection; someone was